Linux Poll - please look at
 

:Pengy: :Pengy: :Pengy: :Pengy:

Which of these three OS would you choose for personal desktop use:

SuSe Linux

RedHet Linux

Mandrake Linux


Please submit your opinion about the "one" you would choose.. Also please submit the version also. Thank You!

:Pengy: :Pengy: :Pengy: :Pengy:

Really it's a tie.

Probably Red Hat.

Although I run Debian, Slackware, and Vector.

Red Hat is not linux... it is it's own OS.

I would suggest Mandrake 9.0 since 9.1 is giving me all kinds of crap.

:tisk: Did you read the rules you agreed to? :study:

# What distro should I use
A Beginner's Guide to Choosing a Linux Distribution

I'd go with RedHat because that's what I'm running under and yeah, I'm a bit biased, but RedHat is running really well (once i updated my graphics drivers...)

i'd argue none of those is an OS, linux is the OS, distros are merely .... snap on tools.

SuSE would probably be the go, it's cheap to get the pro edition and comes with alot of stuff, which is grand if you don't want to download everything.

I've bought it 3 times, so yeah ... i liked it.

Mandrake, i've tried twice, it was ... easy, right up to the point where it thinks it knows better what you want to do than you ... (bought that once, and got it of a mag once) significantly cheaper than SuSE but you get far less, besides comparing a pocketbook edition to a pro bundle ain't exactly fair. Oh yes, compiling a kernel was too much of a pain, i tried for a collective 10 minutes before i decided that debian was easier to use than mandrake9 in that regard.

As for Redhat ... lets see
bought it as a pocketbook distro four times, and went from using it for hours at a time down to using it for 30 minutes. after those 30 minutes were up i sufficiently disliked red hat 7.3 that i decided to go to mandrake 8.1 and give it a decent workout. Problem was, Redhat had issues with my installing nvidia drivers, ... i'd had issues with X before then, but not like that. Turns out redhat, X and KDE are renown for not getting along.

the choices you don't give, that i would list, are Debian, which was wonderful, a true eye opener, taught me alot, such as how to configure a cd burner ... and to appreachiate emacs to configure the system. Plus it is cheap, 6 cd distro for $30, alas ... the .deb package management had issues, though RPM on SuSE is just as vile at times. Plus ... when java crashes on debian, it crashes good. Locked libraries = reboot. SuSE did that alot better, (java still crashed, but atleast you can kill the processes and don't have to reboot)

Lastly, Slackware ... "they don't exist anymore" i was told a little while ago, (idiots, just like german tourists are everywhere) oh boy, i've been using this for ... 2 weeks now, it is the most beautiful thing i've ever used.
And i mean in terms of how things work, KDE 3.1.2 goes along way, but still has a long way to go too. Truely a "where have you been all my life" experience. and it fits on a single CD (though i bought the 4 disk set) ...

Overall i've spent more money on Linux than on Microsoft products, but it is so worth it ... Software runs faster, more stable and with less hassles on Linux, (and that includes debian + Java) ...

in the three OS, my vote would have to go to Red Hat, particularly versions 7.3 and 9....

says who? Red Hat and Mandrake are almost the same. Both uses RPM, both are good for newbies.... there are some difference though....

and Mandrake 9.1 is probably better than 9.0 becuase 9.0 has alot of bugs... you can do a search in these forums....

Out of those three... there is no choice... Mandrake 8.2 is the only semi-good distro.
I used it for over a year, upgrade to 9.0, and never used mandrake again. Redhat 8 was as bad as Mdk 9..... never tried suse though. I switched to the best distro ever
DEBIAN

Re: Linux Poll - please look at
 

Of the three you mention, I use Mandrake the most often. Mandrake used to be my desktop Linux distro of choice.

All three of these distros are just fine for the desktop, and all three of them are getting really good on the desktop. Red Hat began life by bringing relative simplicity to Linux system packaging, but in recent years, has been mostly focused on the server side applications rather than consumer or business desktop systems. Their most recent versions, 8.0 and 9, now recognize the importance of the desktop and are getting better. Red Hat makes a good choice.

Mandrake really raised the bar of desktop Linux use, and it has been a desktop oriented system from the very beginning. Mandrake often sacrifices application stability for access to the very latest software, but they are also very good about making fixes and updates readily available, but if stability is more important to you than trying the latest software, you might want to reconsider. Otherwise, Mandrake is great. I'm using Mandrake 9.1 happily now and I've had good results with 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 9.0, and now 9.1.

SuSE is a good choice, too, but it just doesn't fit my interests. It's actually very comparable to Mandrake and Red Hat in many ways, but I run into petty little problems when I install most versions, and getting freely available download versions is difficult with SuSE, so I tend to use Mandrake and Red Hat more. It's still a really solid distro, for personal taste, I prefer the others.

Mandrake used to be the distro I use most. These days, I use Lycoris most for casual desktop purposes and Libranet, a Canadian Debian distro, when I want to develop and test software. The two L distros, Lycoris and Libranet, both from Northwest North America (Redmond, WA and Vancouver, BC, respectively), get my personal nod.

That's funny.
If Red Hat is it's own OS, then Mandrake is it's grandfather's OS.

:D

Mandrake 9.0

and what traitor would use Suse???

With the fact that SCO and Suse are sleeping together you'd be daft to us Suse or even think about it.

Can I Opt for none of the above?
 

I hate maintaining binary distros.

I have worked with RedHat for years, I haven't worked with the other 2. I do know they are all RPM based, and I LOATHE RPM. All of my machines a directly connected to the internet, and are power some highly visible server on the net. I don't have a choice about staying up to date with patches.

Perhaps it's because I run computers at a museum. I think like a curator, and I can't stand nuking a computer every 9 months to stay up to date. I'd much rather have that machine that I completely understand, and can incrementally patch until the bloody hardware fails.

Suffice to say some of my requirements are onerous, others are arbitrary, but none of them are met by any of the 3 options. Though I'd be happy to discuss some alternatives if requested.

well ... SuSE has degraded really. 7.2 was the best release, 8.1 was terrible, i have less issues with Windows than i had with that releases. Granted i didn't use Windows that much in that time so there was very little chance for issues to arrise.

Inter distribution fighting ... i think it's cute. In the end, what it truely boils down to is NOT the brand name on the cd's it's what version on the vital components (vital to you) and what format the software comes in. Gnome or KDE or Enlightenment or iceWM who cares, it's what's under the hood that matters, and that's the kernel,

Like i said before in an alternative thread, if we all used the standard tools linux would become a mainstream thing, because the standard tools would advance, rather than SuSE focusing on say SAX, RedHat on XConfigurator and Mandrake on XFDrake (though they aren't really focusing on anything except their bankruptcy issues last i checked). If it unified where it mattes, namely the base packages, Linux as a desktop environment for ... "mere mortals" would be viable, in the meantime, if someone asks "how do i setup GUI thingy" what do we think? KDE, gnome? xf86config? /etc/inittab they all link together, because nothing is certain. I'm not saying get rid of the tools we have, but lets code a shellscript (or something else) that is the beall and endall of setting up the GUI on this kernel...

The question arises "can it be done?" Maybe a co-ordinated sourceforge.net project might do it...

(maybe it exists... :P )

Red Hat 9 (and 8.1), and Slackware.

I'm a RHCE, so perhaps I'm biased towards Red Hat, having spent so much time working on it. But it is very consistent to administer.

Slackware is a joy, although I'm not a fan of the BSD style init. But it sure packs a lot on a single ISO image, and it installs and runs in less than 16M RAM. I know. Someone gave me an old machine to play with. Not enough memory for Red Hat. Slackware had no trouble.

Which distro
 

Old thread ... anyways...

Like one of the other posts said, its mostly whats under the hood that matters. Yet certain distros like Ubuntu which I am using in my laptop make life very difficult with little things like

a) Not including certain packages by default (as has been commented upon in distrowatch too) like gcc.

b) Multimedia: ripping mp3s. Ripping is extremeley non-trivial.

c) Their ridiculous sudo which will have to be replaced bysudo su anyway later when one wants to tweak.

However, I would still use Ubuntu for my laptop because it detects all my hardware well and getting packages is easy. In a desktop, I would perhaps go for Fedora or Slackware. The latter is a joy in that it doesn't get in your way and its pretty intuitive to edit config files in it. Fedora is a great distro for users who want to get work done. Except for some initial multimedia issues, it is fully furnished with tools to start using it: programming tools are all there.